Hydrophobic umbrellas are here to prevent sogginess during Japan’s infamous rainy season

If only umbrellas were even MORE waterproof! Oh wait, now they are.

Often, when I meet someone new in Japan and I tell them I’m from the UK, one of the topics the bring up—besides football, The Beatles and the royal family, that is—is the weather.

“Oh it must just rain all the time in England,” they say, only to be shocked and offended when I have to disabuse them of this commonly held notion. You see, in the UK, while it might, perhaps, rain “all the time”, it doesn’t actually do so very hard. Our rain is more like an occasional light drizzle which is just enough to give your clothes and hair a glazing of water droplets but not enough to really make you wet or impact your day. In the UK, putting up your hood is often more than enough, but in Japan, with its month-long rainy season and frequent cloud bursts and monsoons, there are days at a time when you literally can’t step outside for even a moment without an umbrella.

But this rainy-ness brings a lot of disruption, which the country manages to deal with in several ways. As soon as the heavens open, umbrella racks appear outside shops, along with disposable “umbrella condom” sheathes which you use while inside a building to stop your brolly dripping all over the floor. In fact, the whole rigmarole of sheathing your umbrella, shopping, disposing of the used, soggy plastic sock filled with water in one of the provided bins, going outside and repeating the process in the next shop can be extremely annoying.

So, perhaps these new hydrophobic umbrellas will help!

Check out this commercial to see just how water-resistant they are!

The umbrellas are created by company “Unnurella” which is a catchy pun in Japanese, playing on “umbrella”, the prefix “un-” and “nuru” (which means to get wet). The company sells two types of hydrophobic umbrella, the regular kind, which is priced at 4,800 yen (US$43), and a folding type for 5,500 yen (US$49).

Personally, I won’t be buying one of these brollies, as I’ve had plenty of umbrellas stolen from under my nose here in Japan (rampant brolly theft is an unfortune issue here), and dropping almost 50 bucks on something only for it to possibly get filched by someone who didn’t check the forecast before leaving the house doesn’t sit well with me. And neither does walking home in the rain out of a refusal to drop yet MORE money on a replacement.

Source: Unnurella
Feature Image: Screenshot via YouTube – Unnurella Channel

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